The gondola beaches on the black shores of the Isle of the Tombs and you step out onto the wet sands. Black crystals crunch under your booted feet as you drag the slim craft onto the beach, out of the reach of the waves. You stand for a moment, looking around at the strange scene. Chill and damp, the sea wind blows, ruffling your hair.
Pale and glimmering in the faint, ghostly radiance that shines up from the inland sea, a forest of marble pillars stands tall against the blue sky. Tombs and sepulchers and monuments rise about the PCs in the shadowy silence that is broken only by the slap and thunder of the waves against the black crystalline sands and the occasional weird cry of a seabird nesting in the dark boughs of thick trees that cloth the heights of the island.
It is an uncanny, nightmarish scene. Despite yourself, you feel the cold touch of fear and stand straight, one hand on the handles of your weapons, searching the shadowy aisles of the vast necropolis.
The colossal mausoleum of the dead God-King rises on the farther slope, looming above the labyrinthine roads of the cemetery, more lavish than any residence one is likely to occupy in either life or death. They will have no difficulty in finding the place; the difficulty will come in entering it.
Soon it lifts above them, a high house constructed of titanic blocks of marble, black and dense, and shot with veins of gold and green, strange and dire amid the pallid alabaster memorials and sepulchers of snowy stone. Titanic statues line the outside of its walls. Its cyclopean walls covered with stained glass windows made of some twisted organic crystal. The main structure larger than some Old Earth skyscrapers.
The building itself seem as much grown as constructed in some places. Every time one blinks, the building seems slightly different, as though one’s eyes aren’t able to fully grasp its entirety.
One feels a definite sense of déjà vu as one stares upon it. Parts of the structure are less inhuman than others, resembling the most ancient of human structures. Parts of it look Ancient Egyptian and other parts early Byzantine Empire. There are definitely influences of both Mayan and Medieval European architecture as well. Yet, its alien components dwarfs those familiar constructions, as if all one can recognize is a pale shadow of what this building’s architect had achieved.
The place looks simultaneously influenced by seemingly every culture on Earth but none of them. Newly made, yet it almost seems to predate humanity. There is a primordial feel to the place. One feels in one’s bones this Tomb has seen the rise of humanity and will exist well past its extinction.
Above the bronze portal is engraved the sigil of an enormous, lidless eye; the watchful symbol of the Warlord. It stares down at visitors with a fathomless gaze.
They take out the heavy seal and set it full against the brazen door. It makes a dull booming sound like a smitten gong. The PCs shrink back as the dully-gleaming portal swings open silently, revealing a dark abyss within.
They enter. All is drowned in darkness and they may wish that they had brought the lantern from the boat. But it is too late now to turn back, so they go forward, step by step, into black shadows which recede slowly from them until at length they stand before the tomb itself.
This is a mausoleum more splendid than that of a king. It is a sight to awe the eyes.
The inside is no less surreal than the exterior. It is a place bizarre in both subtle and grandiose ways.
It is a vast, high-ceilinged black room of marble, like a square piece cut from the very stuff of night. No seams, bricks, or chisel marks mar the walls – it is one piece of stone, including the low bier jutting from the floor at one of the room. Tier after tier of balconies climb the walls on all sides, their shelves empty but waiting to be filled with whatever artifacts that are deem appropriate for the Lord of the Universe to be buried in. The doors, for example, are octagonal rather than square while the columns holding up the domed ceiling overhead is made of an organic, stone-like coral. The chamber is illuminated by a mixture of diffused sunlight streaming in through bulbous windows and free-floating orbs of green crystal. Huge stairways connect the balconies; the size of the steps giving the impression that the place was designed for beings of colossal size.
Strange greenish flames rise from stone insets in the walls. If any PC peers closely at a flame, it bends and reaches towards him/her, and he/she feels a strange yearning; for what he or she does not know.
The sarcophagus is a stunning piece of craftsmanship. The lid has a raised carving of a giant man clothed entirely in gold. The golden mask with ruby eyes is carved in the likeness of superhuman beauty, majesty, grimness, and fixed in an Assyrian funeral pose. A huge, togalike robe covers most of the muscled body and limbs; that is chainmail-like shroud of small tiles made of sapphires, rubies, and hammered plates of gold, their color accentuating the segments of black pearls used to shape the figure’s hair. Gauntlets of solid gold encase the hands; boots of solid gold encase the feet. Included among the tiles are rows of hieroglyphics and columns of Celestial script detailing his accomplishments.
At first, there is nothing when the sarcophagus is opened. Then light blooms out of the womb of night – a flare of green radiance that lights the interior of the tomb like some unearthly day.
When the sarcophagus is opened, a set of unlit stairs will lead down. The stairs are gold, and creak ever so slightly underfoot, as each stair is a pressure plate, and heavy voltage conduits will electrify the stairs (gold is, after all, a splendid conductor)
This chamber is the true “tomb” of the God-King; his sanctum sanctorum, a great armored battle-crypt in which he may rest and recuperate and return again.